“I wanna take my baby and run.”
This was my thinking when I entered the world of adoption a little more than thirteen years ago. There was so much I was unaware of. So much I needed to learn and understand. And the truth is, there is so much more learning to be done.
When I entered the adoption space it was by my own choosing. I entered the only way I knew how, as an adoptive parent. I had a glamorous view of adoption at first. Thinking, “won’t this be grand?”
Importance of the birth family
I tried to control the situation by paying a lot of money to a private agency because I wanted a healthy infant who looked like my husband and me in some way. As the story goes, we ended up adopting our eldest daughter Macyn who has Down’s syndrome.
She came home with a list of serious health issues that we were told may mean “she will live to be five, maybe as old as eight.” This baby girl had an adoption plan created for her solely based on the fact that she had Down’s syndrome.
She rocked our world and changed the trajectory of our lives forever. But the details of that are for another day (also found in my first book The Lucky Few).
One year after she came home we got together with her birth parents and biological older sister. Then another year after that, we met the majority of her extended family at a birthday party they threw for her.
This opened up my mind and heart to birth families and the importance of a relationship with a birth family if it is possible.
A complex tragedy
So much about what I believed adoption to be when I thought, “I want to take my baby and run!” was challenged as I opened up my ears and my heart to other players in the adoption narrative.
For example: I used to think Macy being my daughter was plan ‘A’. Now I can recognize that it was always plan ‘B’ at best because I believe in a God who wants families to be intact, healthy, and whole.
I do not believe God would create brokenness for my child, for his/her birth mom and every single person involved in the adoption as the first and best plan.
Another example: I knew adoption could be challenging, but it took me some years to recognize the very important fact that every adoption is birthed from tragedy. There is no way around it.
The starting point of an adoption is tragic, complex, and full of brokenness.
Adoption is not about you
While in National Adoption Awareness Month I reflect back on how there was so much I was not aware of when we started the adoption process. So much I wish someone would have shared with me. And not because I would have changed our adoption story, but so that I could have had a healthy understanding of adoption and all its players from the start.
The fact I get to raise my three children and be their mom is the honor of my life. Here is what I wish I knew: Adoption is not a story about me.
Let me say that again to all the adoptive and hopeful adoptive parents: Adoption is not a story about us.
We are not the star, we are not the hero, we should not hold the most power. Adoption is a three part story, or a million part story held by three main characters: the birthmom, the adoptee, and the adoptive parents.
Adoption is a triad. And each person in the triad plays an important role. But no one told me this. So that’s why I’m sharing this with you.
In the United States, a narrative of the adoptive family as hero has been painted in bold bright colors. It is a narrative that I believe has missed the heartbeat and foundation of an adoption story.
Love and redemption
While I have found all of what I share here to be true of an adoption journey, I’d be remiss to also share that there is real love and real redemption taking place in the lives of those living out an adoption story.
True love and real redemption which are given the nuance that adoption requires. Love and redemption with unlimited amounts of space for processing, learning, forgiveness, and grace.
Today I share with you as a person who finds herself smack dab in the middle of processing, learning, forgiveness, and grace.
A person who is walking daily in the redemption and love adoption has ushered me towards. A redemption and love which has allowed me to go from an adoptive mom who thought “I want to take my baby and run!” to a mother who knows this baby is not “mine” alone, a mother with a fuller understanding of the importance and complexities of my role in my children’s lives, and a mother who is dedicated to building up a foundation of processing, learning, forgiveness, grace, truth, and love for the children I have the honor to raise.
It is my hope this month that awareness around adoption expands in my own life and in yours. Forgiveness + grace, my friends.
Consider a few extra resources:
